Posts Tagged ‘virtual reality’

Lacking mystical powers of prophecy (try as we might to guess the end of tonight’s Eastenders), we can’t yet see exactly what will be the fallout of Facebook buying Oculus and its Rift virtual reality goggles for $2 billion. However, thanks to GNAH! and Skipping Stones developer KO-OP Mode, we can now experience the majesty and wonder of browsing Facebook in VR. The wags behind have whipped together a vision of the future with Face It: It’s Complicated, letting Facebookers into glimmering cyberspace to look at photos of their friends’ children.

Now here’s a weird thing: when the news broke that Facebook had suddenly made Oculus VR’s reality much, much greener, you want to know what I was doing? Transcribing a last-day-of-GDC interview with… Oculus Rift’s resident wonderchild, Palmer Luckey. In retrospect, he almost certainly knew his company would be under Facebook’s globe-spanning blue umbrella come Tuesday, but that obviously never came up. Instead, Luckey spoke enthusiastically about Oculus’ future in gaming, his company’s research into interfaces that can simulate arms and legs in VR, all the while batting away assertions that Sony’s PlayStation VR mega-mask Morpheus is any sort of threat. So here you have it: one of the final Oculus interviews ever pre-Facebook. Let’s see how it all holds up.

(It should be noted this story was written moments before the Facebook/Oculus announcement.) We already know the Oculus Rift is the perfect tool for immersing players within cockpits, but I was unsure until I played SuperBike TT whether they might similarly benefit motorbikes. The narrow straddle-rockets can cause problems with positional awareness even without a head-mounted display, but the indie project currently on both Greenlight and Kickstarter suggests threading the racing line in VR could be thrilling.

Just as soon as there’s a Rift headset available which doesn’t blur your vision like a drunkard, anyway. Video below.

Update: Palmer Luckey has posted on Reddit about the acquisition, his perspective on Facebook’s goals, and Oculus’ continued relationship with the gaming world. “Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we’ll have substantially more resources to build the right team.” Nothing about those pesky privacy issues, though.

Original story: It’s not quite April 1st yet, so I guess this is happening. Oculus VR, the daringly sexy eyeware fashion company/hobbyist virtual reality outlet has officially been purchased by, um, Facebook, of all things. It sort of makes sense, I suppose, given that VR stands to radically alter the way people communicate from long distances, and that seems to be Facebook’s focus here. Problem is, the social media goliath sent out a press release that’s full of bits like, “mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow” and hey wasn’t Oculus Rift a PC gaming device at one point? Also John Carmack works for Facebook now, and that’s just weeeeeeeeird.

Fans of the metaverse might briefly remember that period, 2003-2006, when all the world’s companies leapt upon Second Life as a new digital avenue for brand expansion, synergy, and other ultimately pointless ways to invest their marketing money. Well, good news! Because now the Oculus Rift is available, there’s a whole new way to “communicate your brands message.” Supermarket chain Tesco are getting in first, with a virtual recreation of a supermarket.

I would play this. I will “play” this. A trailer of your consumerist future awaits below.

IT. IS. OVER. Done. Slain. Dead. Six feet under. Sleeping with the daises. Pushing up fishes. We gathered one last time for a reflection on this year’s whimsical game dev summer camp, its most important moments, and where the gaming industry is headed as a whole. Part one’s guests include Papers Please creator Lucas Pope, Depression Quest creator Zoe Quinn, and Boon Hill dev Matt Ritter. Part two, meanwhile, brings in such luminaries and champion toe fighters as Gone Home writerly brain man Steve Gaynor, Kotaku features editor Kirk Hamilton, resident Vlambeer madman JW Nijman, Action Henk‘s Kitty Calis, and RPS god heroes Cara Ellison and Hayden Dingman. The end result? A loud, exuberant, exhausted goddamn disaster. Beaming agreements, screaming arguments, and confusing argreements. Also lots of people walking into our room randomly.

Among many other things, we talked everyone’s favorite GDC moments, diversity in the gaming industry, the virtual reality fuuuuuuuture’s growing pains, my Lost Levels talk, and what happens after you release a game like Papers Please or Depression Quest. Settle in with some popcorn and a hideous, burbling soda and tune in below.

What is the story with the Jerry’s Place virtual reality project? That’s not the lead-in to a Jerry Seinfeld-style joke, but an opportunity to explain that Greg Miller has re-created Jerry’s apartment from the sitcom Seinfeld for the Oculus Rift. It’s your opportunity to sit at home, alone at your desk, and take part in The Contest. I lose every time.Read the rest of this entry »

The Valve news can’t stop, won’t stop, will never stop. Until tomorrow, at which point Steam Dev Days will conclude and Valve will clamber back under its Cone Of General Silence (Except During Very Specific Circumstances). Today, though, we get one last blast of information – namely, that Valve does, in fact, have its own “holodeck“-level virtual reality tech, but it doesn’t plan on releasing it to the public. Instead, the Newellian empire has decided to collaborate with Oculus Rift in order to further its goals for a VR-powered future in which PC is king.

Years of only seeing the “VR” suffix in fiction has made it feel futuristic and unreal, but now it’s popping up everywhere. Valve have just quietly slipped support for virtual reality into Steam, letting you use their Big Picture interface while wearing a headset. It’s called SteamVR of course, and it’s in beta.Read the rest of this entry »

Curse the BBC! How is a humble commercial games site like Rock, Paper, Shotgun supposed to compete when a publicly-funded socialist behemoth like the British Broadcasting Corporation is getting all the videogame scoops?

Valve’s Brian Coomer has told Auntie that they’re “days away” from releasing a VR SDK. The development kit will launch at Steam Dev Days, which happens in Seattle on the 14th and 15th, and is designed to help game creators make VR headsets like the Oculus Rift compatible with their games.Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, that’s right: You. That is who this article is for. Absolutely, positively nobody else. And by that, I of course mean Yousef Johnson, the world’s most average PC gaming enthusiast. He spends much of his leisure time playing on his own custom-built PC, largely by way of Steam. According to Valve, You (and perhaps by extension, also you) are who the initial line of Steam Machines is aimed at. And yet, so far it’s difficult to find many reasons to care. There’s the living room appeal, sure, but what’s to stop You from simply installing SteamOS on his own machine, buying a Steam controller, and doing a bit of quick (not to mention free) legwork? I asked Valve to justify its massive yet arguably over-cautious endeavor both now and in the long run. Here’s how the PC juggernaut replied.

Hey, did you hear? Valve’s throwing a giant party and YOU AREN’T INVITED. Neither am I, for that matter. Steam Dev Days is a set of developer-only sessions at Valve HQ in Seattle, and I’d love to be a fly on the wall for it except that flies have meaningless, grubby little lives that are typically snuffed out hours after they begin. Also, they’re unable to use virtual reality hardware, which would kind of defeat the purpose of wriggling my putrid little fly body through an open window to begin with. But anyway, Valve plans to show off its own VR hardware prototype during the gathering – an interesting decision given its decision to cast off CastAR and the reality-blurring reign of VR neo-cyber godking 20XX Oculus Rift.

Eventually, virtual reality might actually become even better than plain old, crusty dusty regular reality, but that day is still quite a ways off. Problems range from motion sickness to a jarring inability to put saddles on ant lions and feed them apples while telling them all of our secrets, but mainly there is the issue of money. Reality – minus taxes, living expenses, and everything else you’ll ever work to earn in your entire life – is free. Oculus Rift, meanwhile, will probably run you somewhere in the realm of $300. Actually, you know what? Maybe virtual reality is already better. But even so, the mighty void conjurers at Oculus want to take price tags out of the equation entirely.